PROFESSIONAL SPORTS (posted Feb.3, 2008) Today is Super Bowl Sunday, a day that signifies, perhaps more than any other (except for Christmas), what is most wrong with democracy and the free market system that fuels it. The way we attach significance to an individual's ability to throw (or catch) a ball is stupefying. Why do we not attach the same value to an agriculturist's skill in developing high-yield (and disease-resistant) crops, or a statesman's efforts to find ways to ensure a more equal distribution of wealth? Why do we not have more interest in the indisputable needs of all people instead of obsessing on the questionable talents of a few individuals? Are our own lives really that hollow, shallow and meaningless? Capitalism, with the help of professional sports, conditions us to feed on sensationalism and melodrama. Professional sports is a microcosmic manifestation of capitalism. Like the free-market economic system that supports it, it is centered in the concept of competition, a concept that is divisive at its very core. Professional sports and capitalism both feed on winners and losers, but especially winners, leaving the losers to feed on the scraps that fall from the victor's table. Both dynamics create societies filled with hollow souls, people who do not lead lives of their own, because they are coaxed by the powerful social forces around them to follow the lives of others. It is no wonder that the phrase, "Get a life," has become popular in our culture. Such a sentiment would have no meaning (and thus no currency) in a society of people who were truly in charge of their own lives. A society filled with such soulless individuals is a necessary (indeed, an unavoidable) by-product of both capitalism and professional sports. But Nature abhors a vacuum. A life devoid of true personal significance will naturally seek ways to fill such emptiness. Hence the world of entertainment. Entertainer. That is all that a professional athlete truly is. The influence of the entertainment industry on our lives (of which professional sports is but an element) is a direct reflection of the sheer hollowness of those lives. (A life already filled with personal meaning has no need to be filled with contrived meaning.) And considering what a huge industry it is, we can only conclude that we are indeed the hollow men that T.S. Eliot wrote of. Hollow men. This is the true legacy of capitalism (and professional sports).
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